Why Do We Love Paper? Producing Documents from CRM 4

Sarah Boothroyd

Director, Business Process & Systems Application

Orchid Cellmark Ltd

Introduction

Aims Share Our Experience of Printing from CRM 4.0

Provoke Discussion

Learn from each other

Business Context Leading DNA Testing Business (20 years exp)

Relationship Testing (Paternity)

Forensic Casework

Content

Why We Love Paper

User Requirements

Our Options

Our Solution

Discussion

Why Do People Love Paper?

Permanent, Physical, Tactile -

confidence of existence/reality Signed copy perceived as more

‘official', higher quality communication

Preferred by the less tech savvy Some customers do not have email –

certainly not secure email ‘Easier’ to read paper than on screen Some people just like paper

User Requirements

Documents appear magically at the printer from the correct paper tray

Better than the current system User editable templates Auto generated bar code labels Letters to be easily personalised Option of batch printing Easy to add/change printers

What are the Options?

Mail Merge Third Party add-on Reporting Services Export to Excel Bespoke Solution Others….

What did we do?

Bespoke was best for our requirements

Preferred price tag of third party add-on

Best of both worlds solution

Teamed up with our MS Partner to develop a bespoke app/add-on – sharing costs

How does it work?

Create Basic .rtf template Upload template & printer Integrate with Workflow

Use It….. Entirely through CRM interface

OR Use Printing Web App Direct

Basic Template .rtf template Easily User Editable in Word Pad

Meaningful Field Names to

correspond to CRM workflowField Names preceded by | will

have line removed if empty

Easy Upload

Set Up New Printer

Click to Add Printer

Easy Upload

Set Up New Printer

Enter Printer Name & Click Save

Easy Upload

Set Up New Printer

Paper Trays Identified Automatically

Easy Upload

Add Letter

Click Add Letter

Choose Letters

Easy Upload

Add Letter

Upload the .rtf file, select printer

and Save

Create Workflow

Workflow plug-in allows Printing selection as standard workflow option

Create Workflow

Choose ‘Set Properties’ to choose data to send to printing application

Create Workflow

Letter Name & Field Names match the Printing Application

Batch or ‘Magic’ printing

Create Workflow

Result

Personal Touches

In the Archive or Letters Area the user has the option to

open the standard letter in Word and modify

Batch Printing

Workflow for batch printing

View For Letters Ready

Other Reporting Tools

We do use other tools too! Reporting Services

Estimates Courier Forms Management Reports

Export to Excel Management Reporting where managers

prefer to manipulate their data in Excel

Other things to share….

Postcode lookup for multi-tenancy CRM 4 – Vigence has written free code for Postcode Anywhere integration

Workflow modification can disable on-load javascript of associated form

Workaround is to re-publish the entity following workflow change

Have experienced ‘hanging’ on IE6 on certain machines – seems to be fixed by upgrading to IE7

Discussion – How do you create documents from CRM 4?

We saw earlier that there are many

options to choose from

We are pleased with our solution but it is

not the only way

What do you do?